


A Perfect Moment

by yuletide_archivist



Category: A Separate Peace - John Knowles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-05
Updated: 2007-07-05
Packaged: 2018-01-25 01:27:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1624292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gene/Phineas.  Gene and Finny do not engage in homosexual activity on the beach.  No, sirree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Perfect Moment

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Talullah

 

 

_It was a courageous thing to say. Exposing a sincere emotion like that at the Devon School was the next thing to suicide. I should have told him that he was my best friend also and rounded off what he had said. I started to; I nearly did. But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.  
_

* * * * * * * * * *

How could everything be so simple for him? And by "simple," I don't mean "easy," though I suspect that simplicity does in fact make things easier. But did Finny really take it for granted that all the strange tensions and emotional vagaries that flowed in the air between us could be contained by the simple phrase "best buddies?" Or did those complexities exist only in _my_ mind, making words like "buddy" and "pal" and "chum" - comfortable as old clothes to everyone else, it seemed - hang so poorly on me, a secret (I hoped) emblem of some lack or excess in myself?

"We can't engage in any homosexual activity," Finny said suddenly, and the world stopped, hung suspended.

"When you go before the draft board, they ask you if you've ever engaged in any homosexual activity," he went on, in the same thoughtful tone. "You have to be able to say no."

The world tilted alarmingly. "Stop kidding," I said, in a sharper tone than I meant to use.

"I guess I can see why they would do that," he continued, as if I had not spoken. His tone suggested that he was making an unreasonable concession, out of a high-minded desire to be equitable and see the other guy's point of view. "They want your mind to be on fighting, after all. But I think they're two very different things, fighting a war, and relaxing on a deserted beach. Really, you can't begin to compare them, can you?"

He rolled over onto his side, propped himself up on one elbow, and looked at me earnestly. I stared back at him speechlessly. He flopped back down.

" I just think it's unfortunate, that's all," he said, his eyes on the night sky. "I mean, here we are, the only two people on the beach, with the stars, and everything. The sound of the ocean. Well, naturally, when you are on the beach, you can hear the ocean. But you know what I mean. It's a _perfect_ moment."

There was a silence. He closed his eyes and stretched. "'Night," he said, and fell asleep.

Gradually I began to breathe again. A perfect moment. Yes, it was, and when it had finally arrived, I had been to paralyzed to move or speak. I hated myself utterly.

I didn't expect to sleep myself that night, but I did. At that age, it seems, I could always eat or sleep, no matter how convinced I was that my life was over. I dozed a few hours and woke in the dim gray hour before sunrise. I suppose I need not say what sort of dreams I had had. They stirred beneath my skin as I watched the sun creep over the horizon, waking glimmers of light and color on the dark surface of the ocean.

Finny stirred beside me, and I turned to look at him. He was still asleep. One of his hands blindly found its way under his shirt and scratched his belly, then fell back to his side. His shirt remained bunched up in front, showing a hint of skin. A few curling bronze hairs caught the rays of the sun and glinted.

I _had_ to move closer. Slowly, as stealthy as a man bent on murder, I rose to my knees and leant in toward him, watching his face, his smooth brow, his lips gently curved in a relaxed smile. I studied him, giving him the kind of minute examination I had never dared when his eyes were upon me, moving down his body until I hovered over that swathe of bare belly that rose and fell in deep, easy breaths. I was so close to him that my own breath must have been ghosting against his skin, but still he did not stir, and his sleeping quiescence compelled me to go even further.

My hand reached toward him and carefully, so carefully, I pushed the cloth of his shirt up a little, revealing more of the skin stretched taut over his ribcage. I closed my eyes and breathed in the clean boyish smell of him for a moment. Then I opened them again, for like any thief I needed to be alert. My eyes remained open and fixed on his face as I let my lips brush against skin.

In fact, I was so fixed on his face - which gave nothing away - that I failed to notice his hand rising until his fingers touched my hair. I froze, caught.   
He gave my head an affectionate thwack.

"No homosexual activity," he reminded me, and opened his eyes. I sat up, torn with fury and longing and a crazy desire to laugh. Finny just smiled.

"I'm just going to sleep a little more," he said. "You know how hard I sleep, right? Takes an express train going by to wake _me_ up... Hold on."

And as I stared, incredulous, he pulled his clothes all the way off.

"Doesn't sand feel good against your skin?" he asked with a grin, wriggling a little like a puppy. "Back to sleep now." And he closed his eyes and lay there, relaxed as before.

My mind reeled as I tried to grasp just what I had been given permission for. His left hand rested beneath his head, and, looking at the tuft of hair beneath his arm, I wondered crazily if the draft board would object to my burrowing into Phineas's armpit. Then, as he continued to lie still and unseeing, my eyes traveled downward. The little loose curls of hair that began on his belly thickened and tightened at his crotch. His penis was long, half hard, stirring a little against his thigh. His right hand scratched at his belly again, then casually reached lower.

My overheated imagination simultaneously made it my hand that was touching him, and my body that his hand was exploring. My own hands urgently tore at my clothes.

* * * * * * * * * *

_Phineas woke up talking. "That was one of the best night's sleep I ever had."_

A/N: The italicized opening and closing quotes are from the text of John Knowles's _A Separate Peace._

 

 

 


End file.
